One eighty-five Nassau Street has recently been a showcase for many seniors' artistic endeavors. While the written thesis — required by most departments — is an opportunity for the culmination of one's academic career at Princeton, the creative thesis provides a chance for students to explore what is oftentimes an even greater passion.
For choreographer Nicholas Petry '02, however, rather than being a culmination of his work, his creative thesis is more of a beginning. He plans to pursue choreography in the future, but one can get a glimpse of his work right now, as, this week, 185 Nassau will showcase Petry's creative thesis within Princeton's program in theater and dance.
The most recent issue of "Princeton Alumni Weekly News" (a spoof of PAW put out by the staff of Tiger Magazine) featured a cover article on the increasing popularity of the creative thesis. Nic's experience with this growing trend, however, has been no joke.
While some seniors combine their written requirements with the creative method, Nic — an Ecological and Evolutionary Biology major from Champaign, Illinois — has been working tirelessly to fulfill departmental requirements in addition to pursuing his passion for choreography and dance.
"It's really disparate . . . just many ideas," Petry says of the style of his choreography. Each of the ten separate pieces that make up his thesis, which is performed by a total of fifteen dancers, aims to tell a different story. "Hopefully [they] will form a unified picture in the end, but I guess that's for the audience to decide," Petry adds.
This particular collection doesn't quite target your ordinary dance connoisseur. "A lot of dance is not accessible until you've studied it," Nic explains, so he has made it his goal to create a performance that someone off the street to be able to enjoy and understand.
He is quick to emphasize the variety and contrast of the show's different pieces, which range from "Waverly Drive" (performed to a traditional rendition of "Danny Boy") to "Tagged" (performed to Dmitri Shostakovich's "Cello Concerto No. 1").
The title of the collection is "The Glow Show, or: Blue Color Dance," and the project began as sporadic visions of choreography that just started, as Petry recalls, "popping into my head last semester."
Over the course of the past semester, Petry has pulled these ideas together into a thesis that reaches final form this week. He recruited his dancers through his "knowledge of the dance scene here." A large number are from BodyHype, a few from diSiac, and several who aren't affiliated with the dance department or any dance group.
Unlike many students in the program, Nic had no dance experience prior to Princeton. "I was actually recruited for football, and was on the team my freshman year," he explains, "but decided that wasn't the path I wanted to take." The next fall he enrolled in a dance course offered by the University, and ended up enjoying it so much that he took an additional one in the spring semester. Additionally, Petry is a member of BodyHype.
While several creative theses combine students' true passions with their departmental requirements, the work for Petry's major is completely separate from that of the program in theater and dance (the dance component is headed by Professor Ze'eva Cohen). Petry spent his junior spring semester in Panama, as he puts it, "chasing cats around the jungle" for his EEB thesis.
His recent nights have been spent putting the finishing touches on this written culmination of this research, which will likely be entitled: "Audible Ocelots: Telemetry with a Twist." Needless to say, his days have been devoted to preparing for the creative dance performance.
Next year Petry will attend graduate school at the University of Illinois, where he plans to continue to study choreography and dance.
The performances are completely free and open to the public and offer a firsthand glimpse at the depth of creative and artistic talent here on campus.
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